Trafford Park Raid Manchester 12.03.15

[muddymusic]

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the raid day. I had minimal info before hand, it was all very short notice with a call from Alpha to basically say 'Raid, next week, drive to mine, then we drive there. It's definitely one you don't want to miss' so I had to go.

It was an 800 mile round trip over 36 hours for me, and I've still not quite recovered! Drive for 5 hours. Swap car. Drive for 4 hours. Drink beer. Doze for 6 hours. Move cabs for 4 hours. Drive for 4 hours. Unload lorry. Drive for 4 hours. Collapse.

Was it worth being involved? Hell yeah

Other side of that ^ was all this....

A f*cking Arabian!

 

[Guests]

edit: 2 (TWO!!) Space Harrier deluxes.. side by side??!!!!

I also can´t get that in my head....now I know how people felt when I found the two Space Ace´s side by side....

 

[muddymusic]

That's my pics from room one.

 

[deano76]

Feckin awesome, some lovely looking cabs there !

Again, well done to all involved

 

[stevebm1]

I wonder how many people have stated I own the only one in the uk,then they look at these photo's and think buga

 

[Russ J]

So many dedicated cabs in one raid...that is the stuff that dreams are made of...superb stuff just superb....Well done to all that were involved.

 

[witchfinder]

Wow, amazing haul and amazing pictures. Some of these look to be in pretty good cosmetic shape, amazingly. That Tapper looks great, given it was in the tin shed!

Congrats to all involved and I look forward to seeing what comes up for sale...

 

[muddymusic]

Some more cab pics

I still can't believe there were two Space Harrier DLX cabs behind this wall - As well as some other stunning cabs!

guddler2015-03-16 18:46:35

 

[smarty]

Totally blown away by all the dedicated cabs in the haul. And an Atari Video Pinball too in the raid. Black & White greatness right there! Well done and thanks for sharing the photos

 

[LAZORIAN]

Great pics Muddy!
It's great fun to try and identify the cabs, and even cooler when you see them properly.
This selection is pretty much as good as it gets....

I kind of feel sorry for the guy who lost this lot, but this is what happens if you end up in debt but try and hang on to everything.
It would have been much better for him to sell some of these and pay the debt, he would still have most of them no doubt instead of losing it all

ianski2015-03-16 18:45:52

 

[dojicade]

Simply, amazing!

 

[guddler]

I've got around 80 pics but they'll be put up in a gallery section on the site rather than flooding this thread. And yes, I was there. I knew about it around 1.5 to 2 weeks before and took a couple days off work to do it as it was a major drive for me too (not as far as Muddy mind). I wasn't one of the people funding the project though, I was happy to but that was already sorted by the time I was involved.

It was nice just to go up and all have a beer together in the hotel the night before. There were a couple of new faces I'd not met before but for the most part these guys are friends I've known for nigh on 15 years now and don't get to see them often enough

But yeah, seriously hard work. 5h drive up there, in the bar till 1am, up again for breakfast at 7am, shifting stuff all day, finally getting away for the 5h drive home by around 4pm. Got home 10:30pm. Fecked. And I'm not a cab shifter!!

 

[Hurray Banana]

Some more cab pics

Star Rider

 

[deano76]

That Tapper cab is a thing of beauty and great game too !

Think I'll go and have a bottle of Bud right now !

 

[JohnBud]

Well done

 

[_Matt_]

Love reading these raid threads. Must be such a buzz walking into a room knowing it's filled with old cabs that have been locked away from the world for years and not having a clue what you're going to find.
Nice work guys,and thanks for sharing the pics.

 

[muddymusic]

More awesome cabs kept coming.

Despite the Tempest having a Time Traveller cab stacked straight on top of it the glass survived.

I think there were 16 of these Neo Print cabs. It's a shame they are so massive, ugly and useless. If they were the size of a Dino King I'd have taken the lot!

 

[gjclark5]

What an amazing find, well done on all the hard work moving all those cabs

 

[DataEast77]

ah thought i recognised that seat my brother has a starrider

 

[RGP]

I'd heard rumours and I do mean just rumours that something like this existed a few months ago but the proof is there.

3 days a week I work in Trafford Park too.

Do we know if they were a collector's set or a previous operator etc? It would not surprise me given the location if some had come from Blackpool. The reason I say that is I got to chat with a few ex-techs from there a while back and they said that a lot of the games went to storage somewhere in Manchester.

Might be some lineage to trace.

As always, well done to all involved, some of the machines look in pretty good shape for the time they've spent there. A long and probably nail biting experience as always for Oliver as we all know the fears of machines getting scrapped.